Virtual Reality Environment as a University Online Education Platform

The recent COVID-19 epidemics resulted into much more extensive online distance education at all universities. The growing power of Information and Communication Technologies allowed considering educational approaches unimaginable recently. The return to the previous stage is many university educators' desire. At the same time, no one can exclude similar emergency situations in the future. The universities and their educators have to be better prepared for them. In this paper, we outline a solution: the creation of a “mirror” image of a real campus in a Virtual Reality Environment. The quotation marks indicate the fact that the VRE should not only replicate the study programs but imitate the university climate. Design and development of such campus is undergoing; the first pilot projects had run and are now evaluated. The paper analyses the key advantages it offers and drawbacks it may bring.